Abstract
After visiting Chicago in 1904, Max Weber described his impressions, memorably writing, “With the exception of the better residential districts, the whole tremendous city . . . is like a human being with its skin peeled off and whose intestines are seen at work.” Along with his wife, Marianne, one of the places Weber visited was Hull House, observing firsthand the social reform efforts associated with Jane Addams. Marianne summarized her view of Addams’ project, writing that, “Her ability to persuade the wealthy to provide support and to recruit working assistants is no less impressive than her ability to attract the poor and the workers and gain their trust” (Scaff 2011:41–42 and 44).
Addams is one of two Chicagoans from different backgrounds and eras—the other being Barack Obama—who become for Erik Schneiderhan the touchstones for exploring the enduring tension in American culture between community engagement and self-reliant individualism. At the outset of The Size of Others’ Burdens, he points to what this duo share, starting with being political activists and community organizers and leading to both being recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. The differences are also worth noting: Addams was an unsuccessful political candidate, while Obama’s quest led him to the White House. Addams, born in the village of Cedarville, Illinois, a mere 120 miles from Chicago, settled in the metropolis early in her life and remained there until the end. In contrast, Obama has led a more peripatetic existence, with Illinois becoming a real home only after marrying Michelle Robinson and for a much more limited time at that.
Schneiderhan contends that he did not want to write hagiographies of either of these famous people or offer political critiques. Without exploring the ideological convictions of Addams and Obama, he focuses instead on the ways they have handled themselves in the urban political arena. The book was written with explicit normative intent to examine how people might change their own lives in ways that make a positive contribution to their communities. One might describe the genre as sociological self-help; or to be more precise, it’s intended to be a sociologically informed guide to self-improvement designed to enhance civic engagement. This is a sufficiently unique book that, although there may be parallels, I can’t put my finger on any.
American sociologists have long been concerned about the fate of individualism in America, usually being of two minds about where it is headed. The lineage of such thinking usually traces back to Tocqueville, who at times thought individualism “properly understood” would not undermine the obligations of citizenship while at other times suspected that individualism tended to be transformed over time into selfishness. Riesman’s lonely crowd feared the erosion of individualism in the advent of mass society, while 150 years after Tocqueville, Bellah and colleagues (1985:viii) raised the alarm that individualism “may have grown cancerous” and shortly thereafter Putnam bemoaned the declining willingness of Americans to be the joiners Tocqueville said we were. Schneiderhan is attuned to this literature, taking as a given the fact that the relationship between the individual and community is often fraught, the basis of what he calls “an American’s dilemma” (not to be confused with Myrdal’s “the American dilemma”).
The book is structured around extended accounts of the lives of these two extraordinary people. Schneiderhan sketches out the formative influences and events in the childhoods of Addams and Obama, sometimes a bit too cursorily. Both suffered losses during their childhoods which could have been explored in order to better understand how those losses informed their respective ways of connecting to others. Each section moves to the anxious years of early adulthood, during which time both searched for a calling that would prove to be personally meaningful and capable of making a difference in the lives of disadvantaged people while strengthening the bonds of community. Clearly Addams was more decisive in this regard, having chosen to develop a settlement house along the lines of what she had seen in London’s Toynbee Hall and never turning back, while Obama tested out Alinsky-style community organizing before heading to law school, followed by a brief stint in corporate law before taking the plunge and entering Illinois state politics (the text only takes us up to this point in his life). While this difference may speak to contrasting personalities, it is also in no small part because Addams as a woman in the early twentieth century had fewer options than the mixed-race Obama did coming of age in the post-civil rights era.
Undergirding the discussion of the actual work both Addams and Obama undertook (and the former receives more attention, understandably since she was at it for a much longer time than he was) is Schneiderhan’s belief that his subjects were pragmatists intent on promoting beneficial social change in a manner that appreciated the limits of the possible. Getting it right in particular cases was challenging, and the results were a mixture of success and failure. Moreover, getting things done inevitably involved compromise. Thus, Addams set out to offer Hull House as an alternative to relief and charity but found herself courting precisely those powerbrokers supporting such approaches. She ended up in the company of those committed to sorting out the deserving from the undeserving poor and, distressingly, on occasion endorsed such distinctions herself. Obama became disenchanted with Alinsky’s community organizing approach and was early in his career rebuffed by the Harold Washington administration when he sought entrée into the corridors of municipal power.
The writing style is engaging and does a good job of conveying a sense of what it was like for Addams and Obama to sort out courses of action in various situations. I think this would have been enhanced had Schneiderhan decided to analyze where each person was coming from politically. Both are seen as left-of-center, but beyond that it’s sometimes hard to know exactly how centrist versus how leftist Addams was and Obama is. Radical social workers have claimed that by placing Addams on a pedestal, the radicalness of her political beliefs was muted. On the other hand, Adolph Reed, Jr., is not alone in arguing that Obama is not actually a person of the left. Without a better sense of Addams and Obama’s political convictions, it is difficult to determine what they actually thought about capitalism and the distribution of economic and political power in Chicago.
Earlier I described the book as unique. I would add that its distinctiveness lends it to use in productive ways in a range of sociology courses. Certainly the three moral take-aways at the book’s end—don’t get comfortable, connect with your neighbors, and watch out for selfish reciprocity—are fodder for class discussions. A slightly cheaper paperback version would, I am certain, yield plenty of course adoptions.